Striking underground utilities or cables during borehole drilling or ground excavation is at best highly disruptive and, at worst, fatal.

Underground utility maps are often inaccurate and unreliable. Maps supplied by utility providers are often out of date if they exist at all. Some services are not even documented, and few run in straight lines.

What’s more, the plans may be design-based only, while the drawings typically show details outside and up to a site boundary but not within it.

Therefore, unless verified, all plans should be considered “indicative only”.

The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007 place responsibilities on the developer to provide adequate information about significant risks associated with hazards such as buried services on the site.

SafeGround’s borehole clearance service uses the latest ground penetrating radar (GPR) and radiodetection (RD) techniques to detect, trace, and map buried utilities and to verify the accuracy of utility maps in the vicinity of proposed boreholes or excavations.

Together, these techniques can locate and determine the depth of services, including non-metallic varieties such as cable ducts or plastic or clay pipes that are often unmappable with traditional approaches.

We can also locate deeper structures such as sewers, and buried obstructions such as foundations and slabs.

All detectable services can be marked on site using paint, and the client can specify the clearance zone around each borehole or trial pit location.